Infini (Aerial Ethereal #2)(86)

And I immediately regret bringing up Katya.

“Yeah.” I screw on the pickle jar for something to do. “She’s seventeen today.”

Brenden nods. “You know what I remember?” He leans slightly on the counter, angled more towards me. “She’s little. Like this high.” He motions to the counter’s ledge. “Ten or eleven? We were conditioning for Infini, and Katya accidentally slid down the climbing rope. Burned her palms badly.”

I remember this, but I don’t add to the memory. I just listen.

“Before she even thought about crying, you were there. You blew on her hands and then lifted her onto your back. You were silly enough that she started laughing, and you found the nearest first-aid kit and bandaged her palms.”

A chill slips down my neck. I see where he’s going. I can share a story in the same vein as that one, only replacing me and my sister with Brenden and his.

Bay was almost inconsolable when their parents passed, and Brenden was the one who made sure she had a dress for the funeral. The one who accompanied her to the doctor for checkups. The one who kept her upright when she wanted to sink low.

I understand more than I want to.

Baylee and Katya aren’t alike, but our relationships with our sisters are similar. Mirrored. Almost identical. He played the brother and the friend and the parent to Baylee. Just like I did to Katya.

Just like I do.

“How you treated your sister—that’s what I liked most about you,” Brenden tells me. “And then you screwed over mine, and I thought, fuck this guy.” He glowers and grimaces.

I go cold.

He nods to me. “So I want to know how you’d feel.”

I dread the next moment. “If what?”

“If your little sister met a guy that got her into hard drugs. That steals on the regular. He’s been to jail for theft, and he’s a stain on the company that she’s employed by—how would you feel if he came into her life and tore at her career and everything she’s worked so goddamn hard for? How would you feel then?”

(Heartbroken. Worried. Protective.)

My eyes burn, and I nod more than once before I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Tell that to her.”

“I already have.”

He shelters his feelings. And then he faces the counter and finishes putting together his sandwich. The air is even tighter than before.

“I would never wish ill on anyone,” Brenden tells me, “especially not Katya, but I hope you realize something.”

I place a slice of bread on top of my sandwich and cut it in half. He waits for me to ask, and I finally do. “What?”

“Being a Kotova doesn’t make your little sister immune to bad guys. Some prick can come into her life and completely unhinge it—and then you’ll stand there and you’ll look him in the eye.” His gaze latches onto mine. “And you’ll think, fuck this guy.”

I feel like I’m seven billion tons of brick.

Brenden take his sandwich to the couch, and then I stare off at the wall, his words echoing shrilly in my head.

Stomach coiling, I grab my phone and text Bay.

Has my sister opened her birthday present from me yet? I send, and she replies back fast.

Not yet – Baylee

I stare off again. My gift was a bad idea. And I’m going to take it back.





Act Thirty

Baylee Wright



“I’ve fortunately and unfortunately known him since I was twelve,” I explain to the girls in my bedroom while shaking out a dry tube of mascara. We’re all in bathrobes, our hair twisted out of our faces while we get ready for the club tonight.

I sit beside Thora on the floor, tiny mirrors propped up. One of my legs is outstretched and the other tucked beneath my ass. And I try really hard not to think about my texts or Luka and my brother chatting right now. My phone, I’ve set aside to ignore that stress for a second.

“Emphasis on unfortunate,” Katya agrees, seated at the desk chair.

The last girl here, I just met about an hour ago. She’s friends with Thora, and also John Ruiz’s twenty-three-year-old cousin.

Camila Ruiz draws the most even cat-eyeliner on Katya’s lids. Substantially more skilled at makeup than both of us. We couldn’t even do a halfway-decent smoky eye after two hours of trying.

“Why unfortunate?” Camila asks.

I blow a clump of mascara off my brush. “Besides the fact that Dimitri has a hundred different names for a vagina?” I say seriously.

“And he calls tampons string peens and spirit sticks,” Katya adds.

“He’ll also talk about his magic dick at some point.”

Katya nods. “And if you’re above eighteen and not related to him, he’ll hit on you.” She opens an eye and looks at the short blonde beside me. “Thora knows.”

Thora grabs a makeup wipe. “Yeah, it wasn’t…good.”

Camila smiles and quips, “Unfortunately.”

She’s better at banter than Thora, but I think Thora would say that most people are superior than her in that area.

I go still while I watch Thora rub costume makeup residue off her eyes, the silver streaks from her performance earlier tonight. She hasn’t missed a single Amour show, and I can’t believe that AE is making her perform aerial silk while she’s pregnant. It’s unfathomable to me.